Twenty-eight
year-old sort-of actor Heath Ledger died on the afternoon of Tuesday, January
22nd. The cause of death, according to initial reports, was a really stupid
accidental overdose.

When
the news first broke, I thought they were still talking about troubled young
sort-of actor Brad Renfro. It took me a second to figure out it was some other
young actor. To be honest I’d never be able to tell them apart if you showed me
headshots and pointed. But whatever; even if I’d never seen any of Mr. Ledger’s
movies, I’d certainly heard the name a few times (both Morgan and I thought it
was “Keith Ledger”), so I guess it was newsworthy.

The
thing is, it didn’t go away. A week later, fans were still mourning publicly
and the investigation into his stupid overdose was still underway and still in
the news. After the first reports of the death itself (and assorted
accompanying bad guesses) came coverage of the NYPD’s findings and the
coroner’s report. The initial autopsy was inconclusive, which meant another two
weeks of pointless speculation in the news. Then came the irrelevant Mary-Kate
Olsen connection and coverage of the funeral arrangements. Recent Ledger
interviews were being scrutinized for clues of any kind.

Meanwhile,
Morgan tells me that several days after the fact, the covers of both of the
free morning papers featured pictures of distraught fans wailing and pulling
their hair near the makeshift sidewalk memorial. And what’s with those
makeshift memorials anyway? How did that insane practice get started? What kind
of loser brings candles, or flowers, or makes a big cardboard sign and tapes it
to some stranger’s gate? Don’t these people have jobs or families or concerns
of their own?

Then
there were the endless interviews with neighbors and celebrities and fans, all
of whom agreed that Mr. Ledger was a very nice fellow who loved his young
daughter very much.

The
question is, why? Why this deranged media overkill, and over-the-top public
reaction? Had they rested all their hopes and dreams on a possible sequel to A
Knight’s Tale?

This
isn’t about Mr. Ledger of course—I’m sure he was a very nice guy. Everybody
says so. But Christ, people!

I
wondered the same thing about Anna Nicole Smith after she was on the cover of
the Post nearly every day for three months after she O.D.’d. You sure
didn’t see that kind of coverage for Doodles Weaver or Billy Barty when they
died, did you? Hell no. And they were far more talented and had a much larger
cultural impact than Ms. Smith and Mr. Ledger combined.

“Every
generation needs their own James Dean or River Phoenix,” a friend of mine said.
But I’m not sure that’s an accurate analogy—if anything I’d just leave it at
River Phoenix who, believe you me, was no James Dean. Hell, come to think of
it, even James Dean was no James Dean. And this Ledger guy? I’m sorry,
but he was a generic mannequin who was in a handful of movies (most of them
laughably awful), one television series, and made guest appearances on dozens
upon dozens of talk shows. In fact, he was probably better known for his talk
show appearances than his movies—which would make him less “this generation’s
James Dean” than “this generations Zsa Zsa Gabor.”

Maybe
my friend should’ve said, “every generation needs some young pretty boy model
pretending to be an actor to die stupidly.” That covers it, I think.

Okay,
so he played a gay cowboy. Big whoop, like that’s anything new. Wally Cox and
Elisha Cook, Jr. both played gay cowboys in their day. Mercedes McCambridge
played almost nothing but lesbian cowboys, and you sure didn’t see this kind of
outpouring when they died.

I mean,
come now, does anyone (apart from his family) honestly believe—and I mean honestly
believe deep in their hearts—that Mr. Ledger actually made any sort of
lasting contribution to the culture or the art of acting? Put it this way—ten
years from now, will people look at some new hotshot young actor and say, “Yes,
he’s pretty good—but he’s no Heath Ledger!” I sure hope not. And if people
really feel that way, I think we’re in far deeper shit than I could’ve
imagined.

I’m
sorry, but it’s just the way I feel.

Normally
I’m tempted to blame everything these days on the Internet and a self-absorbed
youth culture blissfully unaware of anything that took place before 1998. To a
certain degree I could probably do that in this case, too, but that would be
too simple. Fact is, this is just the latest in a long history of media-whipped
public frenzies. There were riots in Midtown—big ones, too—after Valentino
died, after all. (Okay, so Valentino really did make a big impact, but let’s
ignore that).

It’s
not just celebrities who prompt it, either. If you’re young, and pretty, and
rich and you die unexpectedly—whether or not you’ve been in a lot of crappy
movies—you’re going to be much bigger news than, say, a poor single mother in
Bed-Stuy or some smelly old bum in the South Bronx. Plus, you’re gonna stay big
news for at least a few days, if not longer. You know it and I know it; it’s
just the way things work. And they work that way because we want them
to. People are more willing to pick up newspapers if there’s a dead model on
the cover, as opposed to a dead bum. Heath Ledger as opposed to Billy Barty. We
are so desperate for something—heroes, role models, dreams, whatever it might
be—that we’re more than happy to turn some rich, pretty, young actor’s
accidental overdose into a tragedy far worse than the deaths of three firemen
battling a warehouse blaze.

(There
are exceptions to that rule, of course—if a “troubled young actor” with a
“history of drug and alcohol problems” dies, it’ll be mentioned on the news,
but nobody will care all that much, no matter how young, rich and pretty he or
she was.)

There’s
nothing new or original in this idea, of course—it’s centuries old. It’s sad,
though, that for all the things that have changed, that particular element of
human nature has only grown stronger and more absurd. What a bunch of pathetic
losers we’ve become.